Get Paid for Being Stop-Lossed
Quick post courtesy of the great people over at IAVA. Thanks to their efforts, service members who were retained in the military past their ETS, retirement or separation date may be entitled to $500 per month “overtime” for each month affected. You have to apply to your military branch no later than October 21, 2010. Here’s the IAVA video that explains it:
And here’s the link to their site: IAVA Stop-Loss Payment.
About time this happened, but unfortunately people plucked out of the IRR aren’t eligible which is horseshit.
-Dacker
Good news for those who had to overstay their visit, but is this something they knew about? Is it common knowledge? I have never heard of it before. I thought you just had to stay, or extend you stay at the whim of the Service. And are there a lot of IRR dudes over there? I though they were more for home guard type service.
@Coffeypot
I’m going on memory, but as I recall the Army is the only branch still using stop loss. Basically, stop loss allows the service to ignore a service member’s enlistment contract and force him or her to remain in the military. So, for example, if your enlistment contract was for four years and you were stop lossed, you would not be permitted to leave the service. This also applies to a service member who is retiring or resigning.
As I recall, after 9/11 most (maybe all?) of the services stop-lossed certain specialties. The Army eventually transitioned over to stop-lossing Soldiers who were in units that had been put on orders to deploy. It’s designed to ensure unit cohesiveness and continuity, but the Army engaged in some pretty underhanded tactics, such as moving Soldiers who were close to completing their contracts or retiring over to units that were being stop-lossed. Some of those guys had just gotten back from a deployment mere months before.
Most Soldiers consider stop loss to be a breach of contract by the Army. That’s not entirely true, but I do believe it has been misused. It was an easy solution to a complicated problem and it’s clear that the horrible impact it had on many Soldiers’ lives wasn’t worth the additional time and effort of general officers to try and create a better system. It was (and perhaps still is?) the lazy solution.
I remember reading an article where a top Air Force spokesperson stated, after stop loss had been abandoned by the Air Force, that it was an unsavory practice that was only designed for the exigencies immediately after 9/11, and that the Air Force was happy to abandon its usage as soon as possible. The Air Force has a different mission than the Army, although I know of several Air Force units that owned ground in Iraq, but they spent serious time working out an alternative system.
So, the $500 per month is to pay them for the months they were required to stay past their contractually required time.
I’ve only met one person who was plucked from the IRR, but I remember reading in 2005 or so that over 6,000 had been recalled. The guy I met had been out for almost five years and owned his own business. The Army was kind enough to promote him to “Corporal” (which I’ll never understand since corporal billets are based on slots within a unit), since he got out as an E-3. His being called up destroyed his business, and left his family in a very bad way financially. He was an Air Defense guy. They assigned him to work on the speaker system at LSA Anaconda. What a stupid, lazy decision by someone.
Enlisted Soldiers are subject to being recalled for up to eight years from the date they join, even if their active time is less than that (pulled from the IRR). Officers can be recalled for life unless they resign both their active and reserve commission. I did run into a bunch of officers in Kuwait that had been out for 10 – 15 years, and it showed. I remember thinking “cripes, they shouldn’t even make DCUs that large.” They had all volunteered to be recalled, though.
-Dacker
Thanks for clearing things up for me. I knew about the possibility of a recall within the term of the contract. It was a six year contract for me back in the day. Many things changed after 9-11, most of them questionable. But then isn’t that always the way when change is introduced? I’m just glad you are back okay and working on your head stuff. Many aren’t. So keep on keeping on. If you ever get to the Atlanta area you will have a beer waiting (or a cup of coffee – what ever.) Just let me know.
Damn, I screwed up…when I found my guard unit needed me to deploy (my first time) I re-enlisted. But, they still had me listed as being on Stop Loss…I wonder if that screw up will still get me some free money.
Check out the links on the IAVA site above and see. Worth a try.
-Dacker
@Dacker
Good topic. I really don’t know if $500 a month is much overtime when you should be at Ft. Livingroom collecting your retirement checks.
I am the age where the people I entered service with back in the late 80s were all coming up for retirement during this fiasco — our experiences with stop loss was everyone got caught, the only way out was injury or death.